Posted on 07/29/2005 1:25:32 PM PDT by Calpernia
Arthur Zankel, the financier who gave $10 million for the Carnegie Hall recital space that bears his name, plunged to his death from his ninth floor apartment in an apparent suicide, police said Friday. He was 73.
Zankel, Carnegie Hall's vice chairman, died Thursday at New York Hospital after apparently jumping from his Fifth Avenue apartment, Detective Noel Waters said, confirming a report in The New York Sun. Waters said Zankel jumped around 11 a.m. Thursday and landed in a rear courtyard.
Zankel, a member of the Citigroup Inc. board of directors from 1986 until last year, specialized in real estate investment through his firm High Rise Capital Management. He served as a co-managing partner of First Manhattan Co. for almost 20 years, until 1997.
His donation helped fund the $100 million venue at Carnegie Hall that opened in 2003. Zankel Hall fulfilled Andrew Carnegie's original vision for three performance spaces at the complex, offering an intimate venue _ with seats for about 600 compared with 2,804 in the main Isaac Stern auditorium.
Citigroup Chairman Sanford Weill said Zankel (pronounced zan kell') was an astute adviser _ and his best friend.
``He was the director that really understood the numbers, would quickly be able to dissect the details of a transaction and could catch things that didn't make a heck of a lot of sense,'' Weill said in Friday's editions of the Sun.
Zankel loved that the venue that carried his name brought together musicians from all over the world, said Weill, who is the namesake for Carnegie Hall's third venue, the 268-seat Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall.
The construction of Zankel Hall required the digging of more than 6,300 cubic yards of bedrock _ enough to fill 1{ Olympic-size swimming pools. The hall sits about 40 feet below street level, directly under the main auditorium. A remote-control system of lifts, steel trusses and wagons allow artists to rearrange the floor and stage to fit most any performance.
``Arthur Zankel will be remembered as a kind, caring, humorous, brilliant, and wise person,'' Kenneth Bialkin, who served on the board of directors of Citigroup along with Zankel, told the Sun.
The financier also was a trustee of the Teachers College at Columbia University and a director of White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd.
Survivors include his wife, Judy, and four sons from a previous marriage.
I believe unless there is a decapitation, only a medical professional (MD) can declare a death. Thus the numerous fatal accidents where people obviously dead weren't declared dead until later.
Give a hint for those of us exhausted at week's end??
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill Carnegie Hall...
Leni
Hmmm
Since it was NY, he couldn't have a gun legally..so those libs usually jump. The nice ones don't hit anybody if they can help it. Good intentions count.
ping
BTW: I'm still pissed that Carnegie got rid of the small art house movie theatre in the basement.
Hitllary Clinton was a Partner of Carnegie Hall. Arthur Zankel was Vice Chair but then got it renamed after him.
I've only been to Carnegie Hall once (about a year and a half ago to see opera star Renée Fleming)... wonderful venue. "Zelig" ran into Henry Kissinger at that performance in the men's room! He said Kissinger looked quite fit and in pretty good shape for a man of his age.
Hint: He fell from a 25 story building and was still alive after falling for 24 stories. Not for long, however.
I saw Henry two years ago walking down Madison in the 60s. He is indeed in great shape for a guy in his 80s.
If he was "about to get caught" for something, he woulda shot himself.
Jumping out a building on 5th Ave only indicates he lost his pants on a bad investment.
He himself was the author of the story, and he vividly described the surreal experience of looking "down" (up) at the stars between his feet as he hurtled downward through the eerie silence. He crashed down into a thicket of pine trees and landed in a deep snowbank somewhere in Belgium or Germany. Eventually, he was captured by a German patrol. His only injuries were some burns that he sustained while trying to retrieve his parachute in the plane.
His German captors thought he was some kind of spy because he had an aviator's uniform on but he had no parachute (and they didn't find any trace of a parachute anywhere along the route they identified using his footprints in the snow). He was able to convince them that he had jumped out of the aircraft with no parachute -- but only after they searched the wreckage of the plane and found the remnants of his parachute gear with his name on it. He spent the rest of the war in a prison camp -- treated like royalty by his German captors because of his amazing good fortune.
It must be close to a hundred by now.
Play it again, Sam.
Leni
Zelig was told by (I can't remember who) either a guy who was with Kissinger at that Carnegie Hall performance or by one of the bartenders there that "Henry has a personal trainer." ;-)
Which list? The oil for food bump list? Hitllary?
Cuz you ain't dead till Mr Fancy Pants college educated Doctor says you're dead. Doesn't matter if they have to use a street sweeper and fire hose to get you off the street. You are officially alive until the ambulance gets you to the hospital and the MD 'declares' you dead.
Granted, I'm being a bit hyperbolic -- but not much.
bttt
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